The Singles Jukebox

No kicks, I see…

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[5.92]

Josh Langhoff: If driving a crush home in your parents’ minivan has a sound, this bit of muscular twee gets it. That sound partly resides in the yearning harmonic suspensions, used by the Mumfords to signify deep spiritual groanings but brought back to earth by these realists. It may blow the minds of actual teenage lovebirds in cars.
[8]

Rebecca A. Gowns: Cute, inoffensive, toothless, well-worn territory. Nice territory — those are all the chords I know and love. A bit like a song that I’d write. I’m not a very good songwriter.
[3]

Alfred Soto: Music written after the cancellation of “The O.C.”
[3]

Will Adams: Like the Raveonettes if they had a bit too much to drink on the way to the studio. Still pleasant, but off-putting in its imprecision.
[6]

Anthony Easton: Remember that really exciting time when Belle and Sebastian went from full reflexive mope to something a little more excitable, sometime around Dear Catastrophe Waitress? This is sort of like that shift, but in reverse, with less skill and more twee.
[6]

Patrick St. Michel: It’s nice hearing a song that doesn’t treat adolescence as either a dark pit of emotional despair or transcendent time-of-my-life period, but choosing the middle of the road also means a score right in the center.
[5]

Brad Shoup: I’m not dumb, I know letting him listen to his music is a big deal, especially when you want to put on a painstakingly-compiled mix of Pale Fountains and Vaselines. Spoiler alert tho: yr gonna break up!
[4]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: There seem to be almost too many feelings going on from every direction to count, sounding like open sentences from the middle-eight’s call-and-response vocals. The straight-faced performances verge on ironic disconnect — this is How We Communicate Now — but the gentility of the repeated “it’s alright”s that close the song show a beating, empathetic heart.
[7]

Crystal Leww: This song gets sadder and better when you realize that despite the happy guitar jangle, it’s not a song about two teenagers in love with each other but one teenager who is desperately in love with the other who is fairly clueless. It’s still generically twee though.
[6]

Alex Ostroff: Sad twee unrevealed love songs can be gross, but it can’t always be “If” and “Be Your Girl.” I want my nervous unrequited crushes to be as self-assured as Janet and Teedra, but let’s be honest — they’re usually as pathetic as this. So even if Veronica Falls’ entire aesthetic is basically a muted take on that Dum Dum Girls cover of “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out,” as performed by early Pains of Being Pure at Heart, I’m more or less fine with that.
[7]

Katherine St Asaph: Driving your crush home is as universal in song as in life, from Taylor to Kate to a dozen other examples I’m sure I’m forgetting. This is the indie-pop version — well, a version. It’s got one nice trick where it slows toward the end, as if trying to prolong those last few blocks before the house and the point where something could happen (but won’t) (but could); the rest is merely charming and unassuming as these situations usually are. Great for verisimilitude — maybe less great for staying power. 
[7]

Ian Mathers: What kind of saves this for me is the way the vocals, especially the interplay between the lead and backing vocals around the two minute mark, remind me less of all the obvious references and more of, say the Grapes of Wrath. Which just means I’ve got an extra layer of nostalgia active listening to “Teenage,” and I don’t feel great about finding it lovely and comforting for those reasons. And yet, while I’m not how I’d react to even a short album worth of this, for three minutes it wraps around me like a warm blanket.
[9]